Nuts:- mango people go look for the real Common Man

It is now clear to those who want to know that the banana log have closed ranks, and are busy keeping not just mango people out of their Kelaa Dhaam plantain plantations, but also throwing out disposable plants gone adrift like muscular son-in-laws, upstart party presidents, daugthers who supported rebel Presidential candidates and other un-related members of the club.

A true and fair analysis of the recent Cabinet reshuffle in India, if we really want to analyse it, will tell you something:- how many close relatives do you see, upgraded almost as though by birthright, barring poor Agatha Sangma who is paying for the sins of her father?

So, same banana plantation, though some new plants replace the older plants. As people may know, a fresh banana plant is re-generated from the “follower” or “sucker” which grows like a small “stool” next to the older plant, while the older plant is then allowed to live out its natural life.

The following banana plants are dispensable:- son-in-laws, daughters, upstart party Presidents, and banana trees which go off elsewhere and try to grow on their own.

However, one rule remains – banana plants can be as big and as many as the plantation owner wants, but they will always be smaller than a mango tree, and below it too. And for reasons yet not fully understood, if you throw mango seeds into a banana plantation, then the bananas will eventually die.

But then, are we, the so-called mango people, really in a position to talk about the sins of the banana people? Maybe not, as my young friend Gaurav Jain, who holds a Masters degree from a top-end college and in addition can run circles around many brilliant youngsters, will concur.

Gaurav has been pedalling a rickshaw for the last few months, in and around Delhi University North Campus, just because he felt like it. I have been following him around, shooting photos, observing him often when he does not know, taking notes, and also spending time with other rickshaw-pullers. At any given time, there are around 8 lakh to 1.2 million rickshaw pullers in and around Delhi.

Have you ever spoken with them, beyond bargaining for rates, or looked at how they live? And then tell me, are they mango people, or are they something else, let us say, peanut people? “Chiniya badam“, if people will get the linkage?

I had wanted this blog, the 100th I’ve done for Indiatimes, to be about the real people in India – the rickshaw wallahs, for example. And how they in a way which many of us will not understand unless we take time out like Gaurav Jain, will actually define the realities of mango people, as they go about their lives. Here’s his b-log.

But then, the sheer arrogance of the banana log – raising rail fares while giving themselves more and more free railway passes, for example, or notching up tolls and taxes while giving themselves more exemptions, or, worst of all, slamming us hard at home with cooking gas quotas while using free energy in their own huge bungalows – made me think.

Do we really know who the real people of this country are? Sitting in front of our monitors, breathing polluted air, waving mosquitoes carrying dengue away, we know some parts of it.

But there’s so much more.

So here’s what I suggest – go to Delhi University North Campus, by metro, and be a rickshaw puller for a day or few.

And then tell me about mango people. Or banana log. As observed by peanut men.

Before the peanut men, who often think of us mango people to be the same as the banana log, chew us up and spit us out.

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Life is funny. A good rickshaw puller can make more than a qualified engineer working in a call centre. Also, his income is inflation proof – every time fuel prices go up, cycle rickshaw rates go up to. There is some justice, after all, though in the most unintended of ways.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Author

Veeresh Malik, is a fauji brat brought up all over the country. He escaped in 1973 to work as a seafarer globally, then came ashore in 1982 to a variety of stints in India and abroad, some successful, many not. In the last decade as the India head of a small Silicon Valley tech company, he now wants to spend the rest of his life doing not much more than offering unasked for advice and opinions. He has been married (to the same person) for the last 34 years, has two children, one son-in-law and is still looking for the perfect hair-style. He lives in Delhi and does not intend to learn how to set an alarm clock. Also publishing online at Amazon with 9 books to his name.

Veeresh Malik, is a fauji brat brought up all over the country. He escaped in 1973 to work as a seafarer globally, then came ashore in 1982 to a vari. . .